“Macs are as easy to hack as they are to use”, according to researcher Charles Miller.

Miller and his colleagues at Independent Security Evaluators discovered the first known vulnerability within the Apple iPhone.

During his presentation, “Hacking Leopard: Tools and techniques for attacking the newest Mac OS X”, at the recent Black Hat conference, Miller said that, for some reason, the Mac OS has over 50-plus suid root programs.

Suid stands for “set user ID” and is used to temporarily elevate privileges to perform a specific task, such as running executables.

Given the root access provided by these tools, they provide at least one vector for attack.

Full story: ZDNet.co.uk